GRANT: My 13 year-old daughter, Rae, loves to hunt. She’s been turkey hunting and deer hunting for years and is just as passionate now as she ever was.

GRANT: Just as daylight was cracking, Rae and I heard a hen tree yelping not far from the plot. I started tree yelping back cause I wanta keep that hen in the area as a living decoy.

GRANT: I also had a Montana Miss Purr-fect decoy out, which is a visual to help keep that hen in the area.

GRANT: It wasn’t long before those gobblers were right beside the blind. They always know exactly where the call is coming from. We could hear ‘em gobbling and hear their wings dragging. But it was through the wall of the blind with a small window, I could sneak a peek but no way to get the camera or Rae’s gun on the gobblers. When the gobblers finally worked their way around where I could see ‘em with the camera, they were out of Rae’s effective range; we gave ‘em a pass thinking they would swing back by.

GRANT: During this time, we’d had a jake come in from the opposite direction and he spent a lot of time around that Miss Purr-fect decoy.

GRANT: Fortunately for him, Rae had already decided she was holding out for a mature tom. Throughout the morning, literally for hours, we had turkeys in view or could hear turkeys. There was never a dull moment.

GRANT: But as turkey hunting works out, we were never presented with a clean shot at a mature tom. That afternoon, we took one of Rae’s friends hunting out of a different hay bale blind. One of the best ways to recruit hunters is let your friends invite one of their friends from a non-hunting family. Unfortunately, I could kind of predict the results as the humidity was really high and it was overcast and we never heard a single turkey.

GRANT: Sunday after church, Rae was ready to go hunting again, so we headed back to where we started Saturday morning.

RAE: (Whispering) It’s Sunday and I just finished my homework so I could come back out and look for a turkey.

GRANT: It was a calm, partly cloudy afternoon with high humidity and I assumed the toms were not gonna be very vocal. So, once we got in the blind, I started doing a little calling and followed up about every 30 minutes.

GRANT: Because the afternoon was going pretty slow, Rae and I were playing chess on my cell phone – which is a good thing for me because when I’m focusing on chess moves, I’m not constantly running a call.

GRANT: Our chess game was about over and we were just starting to pick stuff up when Rae gave me a nudge and said, “There’s a gobbler in the plot.”

RAE: (Whispering) Stop. He’s looking. Okay. You’re clear.

GRANT: (Whispering) (Inaudible)

RAE: (Whispering) Stop.

GRANT: Once again, the gobbler was to the far right and I couldn’t see it from my point of view. But the GoPros tell a great story of shifting gun and camera over and getting Rae ready for the shot.

GRANT: (Whispering) Tell me when.

RAE: (Whispering) Okay.

GRANT: (Whispering) The head?

RAE: (Whispering) I can see its whole body.

GRANT: (Whispering) Is it in the timber or field?

RAE: (Whispering) No, it’s in the field. I can see it plain as day. Can you see it?

GRANT: (Whispering) Uh-uh. I can see the turkey; I can’t get my camera in.

RAE: (Whispering) It’s a big one. Its beard’s really long.

GRANT: (Whispering) Yeah. We’re gonna shoot it.

RAE: (Whispering) I’ve got to take my safety off, though.

GRANT: (Whispering) (Inaudible) When he’s eating. Make sure he’s eating when you do it. Okay.

RAE: (Whispering) Stop.

GRANT: (Whispering) (Inaudible)

RAE: (Whispering) Okay. Can I get on him now?

GRANT: (Whispering) (Inaudible) Don’t (inaudible) before you shoot.

RAE: (Whispering) Okay.

GRANT: (Whispering) Make sure his head is up.

RAE: (Whispering) Okay.

GRANT: (Whispering) Get halfway up his neck.

RAE: (Whispering) Halfway up. Yeah.

GRANT: (Whispering) Center right on it.

RAE: (Whispering) I’ll wait ‘til he sticks it back up real good.

GRANT: (Whispering) Yeah. Wait on him. (Inaudible)

RAE: (Whispering) Okay. Daddy, daddy. You ready?

GRANT: (Whispering) Okay. Right on him.

GRANT: You nailed him. That was awesome. You nailed that big rascal. Give it to me, girl. Closing of youth season. You nailed it.

GRANT: Rae’s shot was true and her persistence of spending a lot of hours in the blind paid off with a big tom. And of course, I loved every minute of it.

RAE: One of my favorite things to do when I’m waiting on my big turkey to come out is read books and play games with dad. We were just starting to pack up cause it was getting dark and my bedtime. And then, when I looked out, I saw a big turkey. Me and dad had been playing chess on his phone and I was almost going to win. But, then, it ended up in a tie.

GRANT: Adam checked his crop the next morning and we were both a little surprised at what he found.

ADAM KEITH: Of course, she shot this in the afternoon so it had all day to feed. A lot of times you cut ‘em open in the morning and there won’t be much in there just cause they’ve been setting in a tree all night. First off, just gobs of wheat packed in there. But once we removed the wheat, there’s a whole bunch of acorns – whole acorns, some cracked acorns, sprouting acorns. So, we’re definitely not gonna overlook hunting the oaks and the oak flats. There’s a lot of ‘em in that area. Most likely, we’ll kill a few more birds from the information we found here today.

GRANT: The amount of acorns in the gobbler clearly explains why deer observations and even deer harvests were down in some areas in the Midwest last year. When there’s that many acorns that they last until turkey season, there’s plenty of acorns for deer to eat during the fall and when they’re feeding on acorns, they don’t have to move a whole lot and it’s tough for hunters to get a pattern.

GRANT: Seth Harker also took his son on opening day of Missouri’s youth season.

SETH: (Whispering) (Inaudible)

GRANT: You might remember Seth’s son, Trace getting his first deer last fall.

TRACE: It’s a doe.

SETH: Is it the doe?

TRACE: Yup.

SETH: You’re kidding me.

GRANT: Opening morning had toms gobbling all around ‘em.

GRANT: These jakes were working their way out front, but with several turkeys around, they were waiting to see what happened.

GRANT: Not long after, a strutter came into range, but something wasn’t quite right.

GRANT: This is something we don’t see every day, a strutting hen. And notice, she’s serious about it.

GRANT: With turkeys gobbling down the hill, they loaded up their stuff and changed locations.

GRANT: Unfortunately, throughout the morning they were on birds, but simply couldn’t close the deal.

SETH: (Whispering) One there, one there, and one down there.

GRANT: The next morning they headed out to a different location with plenty of gobbling turkeys.

ADAM KEITH: (Whispering) I see ‘em. There’s a hen out front.

SETH: (Whispering) Adam?

ADAM KEITH: (Whispering) What?

SETH: (Whispering) We’re shooting this jake.

ADAM KEITH: (Whispering) Okay. Yeah.

SETH: Boom. Got him buddy!

TRACE: Yeah.

SETH: Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Man. We rocked his world. What an awesome hunt.

SETH: Dude, was that a show over here or what?

ADAM KEITH: They were five foot behind you guys.

SETH: I know. That’s why I said we’re shooting the jake.

SETH: First turkey! Yes!

TRACE: Oh, it’s huge!

SETH: Look what you did to his head. (Laughing)

ADAM KEITH: I think it’s a honey locust landing?

SETH: Yeah.

ADAM KEITH: Little two foot – they were standing on this side of it.

SETH: You got ‘em strutting and stuff, don’t ya?

ADAM KEITH: Oh yeah. I have, I haven’t heard one – look. Look at him.

SETH: (Laughter) Dude, that’s a good shot, buddy. I mean you just followed that head up, down. If it’d go down, he’d go down. Up, down. (Laughter) You were over here?

ADAM KEITH: I was over here, like, framed like this.

SETH: Did, did you have the turkey?

ADAM KEITH: And then you said, “Jake.” And, of course, I was using this netting to look like – I’m like using my head to get the netting off the screen.

TRACE: Here, dad.

ADAM KEITH: He just yanked it off there, already?

SETH: Yeah.

SETH: Here we are finishing up the Missouri youth season and I couldn’t be prouder. Trace got his first turkey this morning. We had a, an exciting hunt. Gobblers were on a string. Came in. Uh, two gobblers. This one committed. These other gobblers circled around and they were gobbling five feet from our setup. We finally got Trace concealed. Yesterday we struggled getting him concealed – getting us concealed and uh, – anyways, we were on birds all yesterday. Didn’t change this morning. We were on birds, but the only thing that changed is we got it done this morning and I couldn’t be prouder. Give me some, buddy. We’re gonna go show Grandma and PaPa and mom and I bet they’ll be proud, too. Great morning.

SETH: You got a lot of turkeys at your place, don’t you?

GRANT: Congratulations to Trace and Seth for a great weekend.

GRANT: Young Pruitt and his dad, Norman, really enjoy hunting together. Last fall, we got to watch Pruitt take a buck during opening day.

NORMAN: Smoked him.

PRUITT: Boom.

NORMAN: Smoked him.

PRUITT: What?

GRANT: As a father, I know that a good hunt makes for great memories.

PRUITT: (Inaudible) Now up to here.

NORMAN: (Inaudible)

GRANT: This week, we’re back with Norman and Pruitt during Kentucky’s youth season.

GRANT: So far, they’ve had some encounters with hens and jakes but Pruitt is holding out for a long beard.

GRANT: After a night of some heavy rains, they hunted with friend, Jacob, and decided to stay on the drier ridge tops and it wasn’t long before they had some action.

NORMAN: (Whispering) There it is.

PRUITT: (Whispering) Yup. There he is.

GRANT: This would be a great bird for Pruitt. Unfortunately, there were probably some hens on the back side of the hill and they kept this strutter busy.

GRANT: Suddenly, there were long beards on the far hillside.

NORMAN: (Whispering) Holy cow.

UNKNOWN: (Whispering) There’s four of ‘em.

NORMAN: (Whispering) Holy cow. There’s a fight going on now, baby.

GRANT: They were tussling and chasing each other. With the birds being pre-occupied, Jacob and Pruitt decide to grab a fan and head out toward the action.

GRANT: Wow. These birds just covered a hundred yards and watch those beards swinging back and forth as they close the gap.

PRUITT: (Whispering) Dude, it’s running. It’s running. Can you see him? They’re past it. You can see them all – can I shoot? Now? Now?

GRANT: Jacob was sure one of the toms was hit, so they peeked over the ridge to find out what happened.

PRUITT: It’s on safety.

JACOB: Shoot him right here. In the head. You got him. We, uh, crawled out here and the strutters couldn’t handle it so…

PRUITT: Came running in.

JACOB: They came running in, after it and, and Pruitt shot and I knew by, by the way that turkey was acting whenever he ran off, that he got hit, so, uh, me and Pruitt went over the hill. Norman had to stay back and unfortunately, we couldn’t get the second shot on film, but we had to do the most humane thing to do and finish the turkey off.

PRUITT: Didn’t want him to suffer.

JACOB: But, uh, we got another one down. Congrats, buddy.

PRUITT: Thanks.

GRANT: All’s well that ends well. Great teamwork and congratulations Pruitt on a great hunt.

GRANT: Karsyn’s hunt ended up being a classic Ozark mountain hunt – hunting big patches of hardwood timber. Usually those turkeys are traveling logging roads and you got to make a split second decision on your shot and Karsyn did a great job.

ADAM BROOKE: Yeah. You put the kibosh to him.

KARSYN: Kibosh?

ADAM BROOKE: The kibosh. He’s got pretty colors, doesn’t he?

KARSYN: Hmm. Hmm.

ADAM BROOKE: The first day of, uh, Missouri’s youth season and it’s Saturday morning. And we got here this morning at daylight and didn’t really hear very many gobbles at all. And then about an hour or so after daylight, we had four or five different birds all along this ridge kind of start to fire up and gobble a little bit and, and this morning, uh, this nice two year-old – probably got about a 10-inch beard – inch and eighth, inch and a quarter spur, one’s an inch and a quarter spur, the other one’s kind of broke off – but youth season is always fun because gobble, gobblers do what you want ‘em to do and, and, uh, they respond great and this morning was a beautiful morning in the woods. There’s blooming and this is a good time to be out and be out in the woods. So, the Winchester did the job and, uh, now we can call it good and we can go fishing.

GRANT: Congratulations to Karsyn and Adam on a fine Missouri gobbler.

GRANT: Even with all the excitement during turkey season, don’t forget, it’s time for antlers to start developing and those fetuses are getting very large in does. That’s why it’s important to keep quality trace minerals out. We put one of our Reconyx UltraFire cameras over a Trophy Rock Four65 station and I think you’ll really enjoy this footage of a bachelor group of bucks coming in to get some trace minerals.

GRANT: There’s a lot to notice in this footage. Which bucks have the larger bases probably will end up having the larger antlers this fall. Which bucks are the most dominant or have the larger stained tarsal glands? Those will probably be the bucks that respond to rattling and grunt calling. I’ll have fun watching this bachelor group throughout the summer.

GRANT: We never have time to share all the cool footage we collect each week. That’s why we’ve developed the clips page. It’s simply a posting of interesting clips we’ve collected throughout the week. It may be deer behavior, turkey behavior or seminars we’ve given at some location. Check out the clips page to learn more about what’s going on at GrowingDeer.tv. Youth season is a great time to take a kid outdoors and enjoy Creation. But more importantly, make sure you have some quiet time to spend with that kid talking about the Creator and what the Creator wants for their life. Thanks for watching GrowingDeer.tv.